Using Choosers

Context: HL Kit … Basic Concepts and Terminology … Manipulation of Visual Elements … Working With Tables 

You're probably wondering why choosers are being mentioned at this point in the middle of a discussion about tables. The reason is that choosers are basically half of a table and bear discussion now.

Choosers present the selected item in a way that is very similar to menus. However, when the chooser is triggered to select an item, the chooser behaves almost exactly like a dynamic table. In fact, it's no accident that the "choose form" and "choose table" of a dynamic table have been given those names. When a user selects an item from a chooser, he is essentially using the exact same process that is used when adding an item to a dynamic table.

Under the covers, choosers work very much like dynamic tables, and authors configure choosers in very similar ways. Choosers are assigned a component and Candidate tag expression that are used to filter the available options. For customizing the choose form, they also possess TitleBar and Description scripts. Consequently, the definition of a chooser will look in many ways very similar to the definition of a dynamic table.